Coke won't comment on whether its original soft drink ever contained cocaine, except to say cocaine has never been an added ingredient in the product. Until lately, it hasn't had much to say about Doc Pemberton either. Now, though, it's leaning on his legend to put some fizz back into its flagging U.S. cola sales.

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A photo of the business of a one-time owner of Coca-Cola.
Kuhns' Photo/Richard Lipack

Doc Pemberton—whose real name was John Stith Pemberton—is regularly featured on an electronic billboard for all to see as they enter downtown Atlanta. His likeness often greets visitors to the company's website and Facebook page. Pictures are posted online of him wrestling with an alligator and walking on the moon. He has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter.

Doc makes an irreverent new pitchman compared to Coke's traditional mainstays—polar bears and Santa—conjuring up a mysterious time in Coke's past, which is perhaps what the global marketer needs right now.

But here's a mystery the company hadn't anticipated: What did Doc Pemberton look like, and is Coke's image of a handsome, robustly bearded Doc the real thing?

A well driller in Maine is betting it isn't. He recently plunked down $17,825 at an auction to buy an 1888 photograph the auction house claimed to be the only original of Doc. It depicts a slight man who is balding and has only a wisp of a beard—and therefore looks decidedly different from Coke's fellow, with a thick beard and a full head of hair.

The photo's previous owner alleges that Coke's version of Doc is actually another Pemberton: John Clifford Pemberton, an unpopular Confederate general.

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The photo's former owner says the figure in the doorway, enlarged above, is Coke's inventor.
Kuhns' Photo/Richard Lipack

Phil Mooney, Coke's archivist, insists it has the right Doc—culled from a photo shared by Doc's relatives. "It's pulling at straws,'' says Mr. Mooney of the claims that Coke has the wrong image, and that the one it has is of a Confederate general.

Coke often stirs mystery to sell soda, making a big deal last year of moving Doc's "secret formula'' for cola from a bank safe to a new vault at its giant World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta. But the photo flap also suggests it can be tough for Coke, despite owning one of the world's most-famous brands, to nail down its own history.

In the basement archives at the company's headquarters, hundreds of thousands of pop-culture artifacts—lining more than 2.5 miles of shelves—trace more than a century of company history.

In all of that, however, Coke has only two copies of photographs it believes are of Doc. One, which it uses for its ads, shows him from the chest up with a bushy beard. In the other, he is clean-shaven and seated with his wife and son.

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Doc Pemberton

Doc Pemberton was born in Georgia in 1831 and wounded in 1865 as a lieutenant colonel in the Civil War, according to historians. As much ambitious entrepreneur as pharmacist, he developed the state's first agricultural chemical testing labs and invented several tonics, including French Wine of Coca, a copy of Vin Mariani, a cocaine-laced cordial developed in France.

Doc died from a stomach illness in 1888. By then he had sold his stakes in the company, was impoverished and rumored to be addicted to morphine. Asa Candler, who secured control of Coke from Doc Pemberton and others, ordered many of the company's earliest records burned in 1910 amid ownership disputes, Mark Pendergrast wrote in his book, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola.''

Coke says it has few primary documents when it comes to the inventor, whose last direct descendant died in 1894.

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The retouched photo Coca-Cola Co. uses for its marketing image of Doc Pemberton, the inventor of its namesake cola.
Courtesy of Coca-Cola

In the 1888 photo sold last month by Fairfield, Maine-based James D. Julia Auctioneers, Mr. Candler, who secured control of Coke in 1888, is standing in front of his Atlanta business. Others are present, including a man in the doorway, next to the signs "Pemberton's French Wine Coca'' and "Lemon Orange E,'' another drink developed by Doc.

Richard Lipack, the antique dealer who put the photo up for auction, says the man in the doorway is a dead ringer for Doc—or at least the Doc who is the subject of a painting commissioned by Coke that now hangs on the second floor of its headquarters. By contrast, says Mr. Lipack, the image Coke uses in its marketing bears a striking resemblance to Lieutenant-General Pemberton, pilloried across the South for surrendering Vicksburg, Miss., in 1863.

Mr. Mooney, Coke's archivist, says the other men in the photo could just as easily be Mr. Candler's "bible class, for all I know.'' He notes an ailing Doc spent much of 1888 in bed and definitely wouldn't have been present if the photo was taken after August, by which time he was already dead.

He says Coke refrained from using the image of Doc in the 1950s painting for marketing purposes after relatives suggested the likeness was off.

Doc has few descendants to weigh in on his looks. In a 1955 letter to Coke, the now-deceased Ernestine Sherman, a granddaughter of the sister of Doc Pemberton's wife, relayed that her mother, who knew Doc personally, reckoned the 1950s portrait commissioned by Coke was "a fairly good likeness,'' though his beard wasn't so "sparse and straggly.''

David Sherman, Mrs. Sherman's son, believes the image Coke is using in its marketing is the right one. The original photo of Doc on which the company's marketing is based is in a family storage box in an undisclosed location in Georgia, he said.

Doc was intriguing enough to catch the eye of Delwin Philbrick, the well driller who bought the photo last month after seeing it on an auction flier. The 52-year-old Maine resident hopes to recoup his investment by selling prints of the original photo to other collectors.

Now Coke is hoping Doc Pemberton will attract the attention of many more Coke fans—enough to help it rejuvenate Coca-Cola in the U.S., where volumes of its flagship cola recently sank to two-decade lows. Doc has tweeted more than 6,000 times, including one last month that quipped, "It seems like only yesterday I was writing telegraphs to all of you."

He hasn't waded into the debate about what the real Doc looked like. In a recent tweet, though, he claims to have been the youngest-ever winner of "The Atlanta Beard & Moustache Competition'' at age 12.

Corrections & Amplifications Coke won't comment on whether its original soft drink ever contained cocaine, except to say cocaine has never been an added ingredient in the product. The original version of this article stated that Coke wouldn't comment on whether its original soft drink ever contained cocaine. Also, the 1888 image of the business of a onetime owner of Coca-Cola should have been attributed to Richard Lipack, the antique dealer who put the image up for auction. An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed it to the image's current owner, Delwin Philbrick.

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